Overview

Large pharmaceutical companies are increasingly facing a specific governance challenge: how should large cross-functional team structures that are routinely relied on for internal programs be implemented on an alliance? These cross-functional teams, when well deployed internally, result in synergies across functions and improve communication and collaboration. With these benefits in mind, it is predictable that companies expect their alliance governance structures to mirror their internal team structures. For varying reasons, partner organizations should not default to simply imposing a successful internal structure onto an alliance. Rather, alliance managers should facilitate a process where the advantages and disadvantages of different governance models are carefully weighed and assessed to put in place the most efficient, appropriate governance structure.

Speaker

Renee Jansen, CA-AM
Principal, Alliances Practice
Vantage Partners

A member of the firm's Alliances Practice, Renee's primary focus has been working with life sciences companies on a range of relationship management issues, including: designing and implementing formal alliance management programs; helping companies launch new partnerships; conducting alliance assessments and partner relationship health checks; and helping to remediate at-risk partnerships.

Renee's experience also includes designing and delivering customized training on collaboration, conflict management, negotiation and influencing skills for a variety of organizations, including procurement and sourcing groups, and analyzing the impact of such training efforts. Along with Stuart Kliman, she is the co-author of Alliance Governance: Too Often Failing the Leadership Test, published in the Vantage Partners Online Journal and a white paper titled Falling Short of True Partnering Excellence: Five Trouble Spots and What to Do About Them. Renee has been a guest lecturer at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto on the topics of negotiation as and building an alliance management capability.

Prior to joining Vantage, Renee practiced law with the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP in San Francisco, California. There, she represented clients from various industries in all aspects of litigation, including resolution of cases through negotiation and trial. Renee received her J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall School of Law) and her B.A. in Political Science magna cum laude from Rutgers University.